The relationship between gender inequality and economic growth: an analysis for Turkey NUTS-2 level

When it comes to 1970's, human capital and its education have become one of the most important factors influencing economic growth and development, and countries have begun to increase their human capital investments to achieve more economic growth and development. However, it has been seen that the women who make up the half of the world population cannot benefit as much from these human capital investments. Especially in the underdeveloped and developing countries, men are more educated than women, have better job opportunities, earn more wages, and are more involved in parliament. This has been recognized by many international instutions and organizations, and many projects and programs (UNDP, WEF) have been introduced to prevent this. In this study, developing countries are located in the category of gender inequality in Turkey for the NUTS-2 level, their impact on labor force participation and economic growth between 2009 and 2014 examined for. Firstly, gender inequality, economic growth and development and relationship between gender inequality and economic growth was explained theoretically, then the previous work on the subject was given, and finally, the correlation and regression analyzes were taken from Turkish Statistical Instıtute. Obtained the correlation results are significant except for the relation between the female-male ratio of higher education graduates and income per capita and the ratio of female-male graduates of higher education to female-male labor force participation rate of higher education graduates. Regression analysis results are meaningless except for the relation between the female-male ratio of secondary school graduates and income per capita. The general conclusions obtained are that the relationship between gender inequality in education and economic growth does not correspond to theoretical conclusions.